Play for Today (1970–1984): Season 4, Episode 11 - All Good Men - full transcript
Now that garden stuff we did this morning
should be marvellous.
It is a lovely house.
I wouldn't have thought
Surrey quite right,
somehow, given your life.
No?
No, I suppose not.
It's handy for London, I live here.
They haven't buried me yet.
Well, it's very kind of
you to ask me to stay.
It will help.
I hope we'll count ourselves
friends when it's over.
As long as you don't mind a good row.
I've never managed to last very long
without a flaming good row.
Well, perhaps a short canter
over the early ground,
provided we don't spoil
tomorrow's spontaneity.
Whatever you say.
Just to get the feel and range of it all.
Now, by the way, I would
like to call you Lord Waite,
if that's all right?
No chance of you not accepting, is there?
No, none at all.
So, Lord Waite, tell us
something about your early life.
You were born in Manchester, weren't you?
Your parents were Manchester people.
Born in 1903,
one of seven children.
Now, what was it like?
Eight of us, mother, father,
four lads, two lasses in four rooms.
Two up, two down, and a lavatory
in the yard at the back.
The schooling, nasty, British and short
is the phrase that springs to mind.
[laughs] Oh yes, I organised
the first monitor's strike,
16 of us, headmistress
took us all into the hole
and leathered us til we could hardly stand
and then made us confess
the error of our ways
before the whole school.
Did you do it?
Yes, I did.
Well, when I saw there
was nothing else for it.
I mean, she'd put her
fear of God up the others,
there was no point in going
it alone, so I recanted.
Live to fight another day, you might say.
I left school my 13th birthday
and went down the pit,
that's when I first became involved
in the trade union movement.
It's what fed me politics all my life.
We might've been living in another planet
for all anybody cared, but I remember,
I was 11, just.
Dad was, oh, 38, 39.
He volunteered the first week of the war.
Joe and Phillip followed him, 19 and 17,
all dead by Christmas,
it's a long thing a life,
you can't get it all in a book.
Did you ever imagine in
those early distant days
that you might achieve
what you have achieved
in the years that followed?
Oh yes, yes, 'cause you see we were right,
and there's nothing you
can't do if you're right.
Nothing?
Oh, that's right.
Oh, it's provided, it's
possible, of course.
[drink sloshing]
[squeaking]
[papers rustling]
[Woman] Jesus, God, I only
slept with him, you know?
He didn't take my soul.
[drink sloshing]
[radio applause]
[Radio Host 1] Germany and Japan.
[Waite] I don't just happen
to remember, young man.
[Radio Host 2] Overwhelmed.
[Radio Host 3] This morning
[radio crosstalk]
I had another talk
with the German chancellor, Herr Hitler.
[Radio Host 4] Can we have
the Britain we deserve?
[Radio Host 5] You send a British boy
[radio crosstalk]
[radio crosstalk]
[radio crosstalk]
[radio crosstalk]
[Woman] Wasn't it nice?
Was that nice?
Isn't that what you wanted?
Isn't that what you wanted?
Oh. [groans]
[plate clatters]
[door opening]
[clock ticking]
Richard Massingham.
[Richard] Yes.
Maria
Waite.
Ah.
Won't you come in?
Thank you.
[door slams]
I--
Have a drink.
Ah, thank you very much.
Yourself?
No, of course not.
[footsteps]
My father's had some sort of heart attack.
What?
Or perhaps, merely a
serious bout of indigestion.
The doctor can't make up his mind.
I see.
I, I am sorry.
Have they taken him in?
No, they've left a nurse.
He has a history of hypertension,
but if it was a coronary,
it appears to have been
a relatively minor one,
as far as one can tell.
I see.
We'll know in the morning
when the results of the tests are through.
How is he?
Would you believe, comfortable?
Floating on a sea of
morphine and anticoagulants
is probably more accurate,
but decidedly less reassuring.
You didn't mean that though, did you?
I'm sorry.
He'll have to rest, but he
won't die, not this time.
Another?
Thank you, no.
Would you mind if I use
the phone for a moment?
Help yourself.
Would you like me to leave?
No, no, no, please, please.
[telephone dialling]
Hello, room maid please.
Hello, Eddie, Richard, hi.
Look, I'm sorry to call
you at this hour, but...
What?
No, no, no, no.
Look, Mr. Waite has been taken ill.
No, no, it's not quite
clear how at the moment,
but it's obviously gonna be
a few days at the very least.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
No, I want to use the time
picking up background footage,
by Manchester.
Yeah, well, I'll give you the details
when you collect your gear in the morning.
I know that Eddie and I'll authorise it.
Eddie I know that.
All right, you travel up, that's a day.
You shoot, day and a half, maybe two,
travel back, no problem.
So take it from Jeanie's float,
yeah, in writing, you'll have it.
Well, general stuff,
look, there's an area he was born in,
he claims has been
pulled down and rebuilt.
Now I want you to check it
out, shoot whatever's there,
we can use whatever it
is, old or new, you know.
Old slums, or new ones,
tower block variety,
and there may be a couple of interviews
with people who knew him in those, I'll,
I'll get the research onto
that first thing in the morning
and let you know.
What?
No, no, no angle, so it may
be a news angle, who knows?
Be prepared, huh.
Yeah, well we'll talk in
the morning, thanks Eddie.
Bye.
[phone slams]
[drink sloshing]
Would you mind if--
Be my guest.
Thank you.
[glass chinking]
Is it simply a distress?
Or have I offended you
in some way Mrs. Bryant?
My God, you boys do your
homework, don't you.
Well?
Don't patronise me Mr. Massingham.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.
I can't decide whether your sensitivity
is real or tactical.
Ah.
There you go again.
Ah, poor suffering inferior creature, ah.
He's old and he's sick and he's tired.
Leave him be.
Is that what he wants?
No, it's what I want.
He's a public man, a
great one some would say.
What would you say?
That's not my brief, I
present, others judge.
Ah.
Ah?
[Maria] Tell me about your brief.
I'm setting up a series
called, "Living History",
they're long, hardcore
interviews with living people
who embody important strands
in our relatively recent past.
This one's the pilot, the first,
they buy or reject on this one.
Why my father?
I wrote to 10 professors of politics,
10 professors of modern history,
outlined my brief and asked them to list
the people they considered best fill it.
Your father was mentioned 12 times,
a major trade union leader,
a quarter of a century in the commons,
three cabinet posts, party
treasurer, party chairman.
Man of the people.
As you say.
What about you?
What about me, I'm not important?
Too bright for Eton, Marlborough?
Winchester.
[laughs] Yes, I should have
recognised that distinctive,
"I'm not important" style of arrogance.
It's amazing.
You're exactly the way I
expected your father might be.
Don't tell me it's chip
on the shoulder time.
You're all the bloody same.
The moment your sleek charm
fails to make the requisite impression,
you fall to whining about
chips on the shoulder.
Your dispensation isn't natural you know?
Or God given, it's bred,
like my resistance.
I'd have thought they'd have told you that
while they were making you.
I think I'll go to bed.
I'd rather not fight if
it's all the same to you.
Especially with someone who insists on
hitting below the intellect,
I know what you mean.
Will you be staying?
For a few days, until he's on his feet.
Ah.
It's half term, I teach,
or I suppose you've had
your researcher on that too?
Did she tell you I'd left my husband?
No.
Good night, Mrs. Bryant.
[door slams]
William.
Rest.
Is your mother here?
No.
[man coughing]
Thank you for coming Doctor.
Bye bye.
Christ, he's older and iller than father.
He never stopped coughing the
whole time we were up there.
I have fruit.
No, thank you.
What did he have to say?
Up Friday for an hour, no
repeats this time they think.
Looks like you'll get your
programme after all Mr. Massingham.
You seen anything of mother?
Nope.
I had a letter from her a
while ago, from Estoril.
Yeah, where's that?
Portugal.
[laughs] Oh Jesus, oh.
How is she?
Oh, she's all right, she's left Frederick.
You remember Frederick?
The one with the teeth.
Who was the marina developer?
Frederick, that was him, she's left him.
[laughs] Yeah.
She asked for your address.
Mm.
What about a drink, Mr. Massingham?
Thank you, no, I have some work to do.
In this new golden age of unemployment
it's difficult to tell
whether you are boasting
or merely stating a fact.
I'll see what there is.
Ah, sweet, there's
Benedictine, Curacao, Drambuie,
dry Brandy,
Calvados,
Canadian ginger.
Coffee.
Must've had his Christmas presents early
from his friends in the city.
They say daddy used to like a
glass of stout in the old day.
Stop making speeches.
What'd you think of my
father, Mr. Massingham?
I think he's a remarkable man.
William.
[laughs] Remarkable, yeah, mm,
now this programme that
you're doing is what?
"Living History", that's the title?
Working title.
Ah, you mean you might change it?
It's possible, producers don't always have
the final say in series titles.
So it could end up as,
"Historical Curiosities",
or "Anomalies of History",
or "A Gallery of Class Traitors".
I think that's a little unlikely.
Do you?
I personally wouldn't mind
in the least, you understand?
Conceivably, he might though.
I believe I've already
heard the next speech
from your sister.
You think so?
I saw a book in compendium the other day,
called "The Knee of Listening".
I couldn't believe it.
I think it was planted by somebody
doing the detailed study
of the double take,
mine was monumental.
[laughs]
Would it be convenient
to call in on your father
for a chat now, do you think?
10 minutes, you mustn't tyre him.
Good.
You haven't really said
anything, have you.
What do you want?
Where I was born?
Early life?
Parents, school, relationships?
What purpose would it serve,
except to confirm your view that,
unlike you, presumably,
I am a total product of my environment.
I meant more the programme.
I mean you're too intelligent, too clever,
really to believe that
one can talk, as it were,
neutrally about the past, so,
when you choose to examine the
social and political history
of 20th century Britain,
through the eyes and the mouth
of a major Labour politician,
you must have some
framework, attitude, point of view,
to hold the whole thing together.
I don't see why?
Well that would mean
that you were indifferent,
that you didn't care.
No, the conventional
rules of historiography
and biography will be observed.
I can't see that it makes better history
if one has an axe to grind.
Can't you?
You see, and I work in the margins
of history and sociology currently,
and have reason to look at
this issue fairly closely.
So you can't look at a
mainstream representative
of Labourism in this century,
my father, say, without
declaring an interest.
Thank you.
Because Labourism is in itself a critique,
both of extra parliamentary
revolutionism, on the one hand,
and of parliamentary Toryism on the other.
In other words, it's not
a state definable with
planes and surfaces and textures.
Well at least it's not in essence that,
it's basically a process.
A more or less, dynamic interaction
between value and value,
between assertion and counter
assertion, stimulus, response.
You just can't describe the welfare state.
You have to account for it.
And that means making
some sort of assessment
of its goodness or whatever,
of its preferability to whatever it was
that it superseded, and
of its deficiencies,
in terms of what was
actually realisable, potent,
during the period in which
it was being constructed.
Well, I don't disagree,
but I'm not writing the
history, your father is,
because he's lived it.
I'm simply the film
camera, the tape recorder,
the lighting man--
The programme controller, the sound mixer,
the picture researcher, the blurb writer,
the film editor, the audience softener.
Hmm, it's not even that.
Suppose, it's the North American Indians
that you want to talk about,
now, how do you set
about writing a history
of the red Indian in the 19th century,
or in this, without
mentioning the word genocide?
Yet merely, to invoke the
concept is to begin to develop
a critique of American society
and the economic necessities
of contemporary capitalism.
So, your answer, superficially
attractive is presumably
to invite along some Indian
chief to tell it how it was,
some [laughs] Edward Waite
of the Nez Perce or Arapaho.
The question though, still
remains, which chief?
Spotted Tail?
Geronimo?
Because most of them led their
people into obliteration.
Most of them sold out,
assimilated, settled for ignominy,
starvation on barren
and remote reservations,
in the face of the higher technology.
Yet, Geronimo and others,
proved objectively
that another way was open to the Indian
based on attritional struggle,
organisation, discipline, courage, will.
So, if you want to write
the history, Mr. Massingham,
you have to say who was right.
You have to choose your spokesman.
Your analogy is peculiarly unapt,
if I may say so?
The history of your father's people,
if I might put it that way,
has been the history of increasing control
over their social and work environment,
and the steady amelioration
of the quality of their life,
and your father's leading
role in this progress,
we take to be pretty well self-evident.
A value, at last.
Let me tell you how I
see my father's role.
If this coronary had killed him,
I'd have suggested an epitaph
from a speech by Kicking Bird,
chief of the Kiowas,
who said towards the end of
his highly distinguished life,
all that there is to be said
about my father's sort of leadership.
"I, long ago, took the
white man by the hand.
I've never let it go,
I have held it with a
strong and a firm grasp.
I have worked hard to
bring my people along
the white man's road.
Sometimes, I have been compelled
to work with my back
towards the white people
and they have not seen my face,
and they may have thought that
I was working against them,
but I have worked.
I have looked ahead to the future,
for the children of our people,
and I have worked to
bring them into a position
that when they become men and women,
they will take up the white road.
Now I am as a stone, broken,
thrown away,
and what I fear most
is that they will go
back to the old road."
[footsteps]
So,
you hate your father.
You listen, but you don't
hear Mr. Massingham.
13, two.
Oh, look at your cards.
Hm, 15, two, 15, four, dead poll.
Hmm, oh, I'll give it to you.
You sure?
Don't be cheeky.
[laughs] It's not like you to give up.
Rubbish, when I'm licked
nobody gives up faster than me,
there's no fun to be a had
in fighting losing battles.
How much is that?
30p.
Then, well you'll have to wait.
You warm enough?
Yeah, I'm fine, don't fuss.
Do you want anything?
No, no no, I'll go
upstairs back in a minute,
it's just that I'm a little tired.
You look fine.
I feel fine, I feel better
than I did before I had it,
I just feel a little tired, that's all.
[Maria] Have you had a
chat with William yet?
Oh, I've never had a chat
with William in my life,
you can have a fight with
him or a flaming good row,
you can try and make the
occasional interruption
to his speeches, but
chat with him. [laughs]
Well, we exchanged unpleasantries
this morning, briefly, why?
He seems upset about
something, I don't know.
Isn't he always, Vietnam,
Cambodia, industrial relations,
wounded knee, was it?
Well, should he be, a lad of mine.
Maybe.
He used to cry for you,
when you had all night
sittings and didn't come home,
a long time ago.
That was the day before yesterday.
How has, how's school?
School is school, I don't
want to talk about it.
I thought you liked teaching,
nice big comprehensive,
airy classrooms, lots of new equipment?
Yes.
My day, it was something different.
Oh, I know about that dad.
[newspaper rustling]
You see anything of your husband?
Yes, I had a letter from him a while ago.
He wants to remarry, an actress.
What about you?
Once is enough for me.
Are you sure?
It's a long time.
My needs are relatively few,
and not difficult to satisfy.
Can't speak for this one though.
I've got an address for mother,
if you want me to write?
What about?
Ah, forgive me, just off.
[clears throat] Well have a safe journey.
[Waite] Now, I've made
arrangements for the interview
to take place Monday morning, as agreed,
now are you sure you're
going to feel up to it?
Yes, yes, yes, they'd have
to cut me up in little bits
and feed me to the dogs
before they get shot of me,
no don't you fret.
Fine, fine, well, oh,
would it be all right
if I came down Sunday evening,
with some of the crew,
just to get things set up?
Come back whenever you
like, it's no bother.
Sunday's your birthday.
What?
Oh, so it is,
well, if you're back early enough,
you'll be in time for the
jelly, and a piece of cake.
[laughs] Are you sure?
I mean, I wouldn't want to
get in the way of a family do.
Oh God, yeah, we've never
been what you might call
struck on birthdays in this family.
No, we'll see you at Sunday dinner.
Thank you.
Well,
goodbye.
Bye
Yeah.
Nice young fellow.
I never can remember whether
he's BBC or the other lot.
Does it matter?
Oh I don't suppose so.
I think I'll push off home
if you're gonna be all right?
No, do I have to be dying
to get a bit of attention?
Don't be silly.
What is it?
Nothing.
I don't like that man.
I don't trust him and I
don't think you should.
Oh, so that's how you suck eggs is it?
Well, I'd never have known.
Now what makes you think I trust him?
How'd you mean?
Listen baby,
I've been in this game a long time,
and you don't get where
I got by trusting people.
Especially not the likes of him.
He's clever.
Is he?
And he doesn't care, about you I mean.
Well, he doesn't have to, it's
a free country, all right.
I don't understand you
young people, I don't.
The minute you feel something,
you think your only
responsibility is to express it,
now in my line of country
that is tantamount to suicide,
"Shout when you have to,
smile when you don't."
Keir Hardie has said, hey?
I think you should rest, come.
No, listen, sit down,
I've got something I want to ask of you.
[grunts]
[paper rustling]
That robe's just come from the tailors.
I've accepted a peerage,
it'll be announced in the
New Years Honours List.
You're to tell nobody,
but I wanted you to know.
Well, say something.
Say what?
Why?
Why not?
No, I wasn't built for
retirement, obscurity,
I'm no thinker, I need to be
doing and this is an arena.
What's the matter with that?
How?
The Tories put you up for it?
Oh, technicality, a deal.
I was offered in 1970,
but I thought I might get a
safe seat in a by-election.
I'll take the Labour whip,
it's perfectly normal.
So do it.
I want your help.
Yes.
Hmm, there's a investiture ceremony,
ooh, sometime February at the palace.
Now that your mother has finally decided,
well I would like you to
accompany me and be my,
my woman.
If you would?
[William whistling]
The squirrels are killing that Yew,
if I were you I'd have
someone take a gun to them.
I don't understand a
word he says, you know,
how can a squirrel kill a tree?
They eat the bark.
When the strip parts meet in
the circle, the tree dies.
Attending the Conservative
Party Conference.
[all laughing]
Don't think we'll use that tomorrow.
No.
Now then, one drink the
doctor said, what will it be?
I've been saving myself
up for a glass of that.
Good.
Thank you, ah.
Mr. Massingham.
Thank you.
Mm, hmm hmm.
Now then, bring your glasses
through, there's a surprise.
Oh.
Ah, [laughs]
you know all the world's
a classroom to this one.
She's a born organiser,
"Do this, do that."
Go on. [laughs]
Oh, oh,
self made God.
Do you need any help? [laughs]
Happy birthday dad.
[laughs] Do you want to?
[grunts]
Now isn't that something?
Shall I cut it or will you?
No, no, no, I want to have a picture of it
before you destroy it, do you mind?
Not at all, it'll probably taste terrible.
[Massingham] May I look?
Ah, yes, of course.
Thank you.
It's marvellous, what's it from?
I took it from a William Morris banner.
You should see the original.
It's marvellous, is that what
you teach, domestic science?
I teach art.
[Waite laughs]
Oh, you made it then?
Yeah, I got stuck at
Guildford, coming back.
Sorry that I missed your thing.
Come in and help yourself to a drink.
[laughs]
Sit down Mr. Massingham.
Ah, [laughs].
I bought you this.
Very nice of you.
[paper crinkling]
Indian oratory, will I
find this instructive?
You might, tell me when you've read it.
I will, I will, oh and
Maria gave me this tie,
and oh yes, and I've had a
tin of very expensive
tobacco from Mr. Massingham.
[William] Tobacco?
Yes, that's right.
It's very nice.
I got you something else, actually, I,
oh I don't know if it'll be of any use.
It's work as well, but I thought you might
just like to have it for
your own use afterwards.
I've had a picture researcher
working on the period,
this is some of the stuff
we're going to want in the programme.
I asked her to look out some
of the best pictures of you and
make it up into this,
if it's of any interest.
Of interest, I should
say so, yeah, thank you.
[laughs] Oh, look at Manny there,
you know he never could resist the camera.
Well you can talk.
Oh wow.
Dear God.
A man could die of memories like that.
Well, I'll go up.
You've got a lot to talk
about I should imagine.
I thought you wanted to
discuss about tomorrow?
Oh no, not if it's going to get in the way
of a family celebration, I--
Nonsense, nonsense, no, it'll
be a sort of party piece,
I don't know, give William
something to get his teeth into,
what do you say William?
What's that?
We're going to talk about my interview,
and I said you would enjoy
a bit of mental exercise.
Why not?
The doctor said an early night.
I know what the doctor
said and I'll see him out,
physician, heal thyself,
I said to him let's heal them after.
Come on, sit down, now let's
all get cracking, shall we?
It's what they call a "Talk in", hey?
Right, off you go young man.
I rather hoped you'd do
the talking, Mr. Waite,
it is your story.
Aren't you going to ask me questions?
Well, if you don't ask me questions,
I can't give you answers.
Well, couldn't we perhaps
just talk, generally, you see,
I'd like to keep your answers as
fresh and spontaneous as
possible for tomorrow.
Look, I am getting on Mr. Massingham,
you may not have noticed it,
and old men are inclined
to ramble a bit, still.
I'll ask you a question.
Oh, well is it germane?
I think so.
Hm, all right, ask your question.
Given the power that
you and your party have,
from time to time, exercised
over the past 50 years,
and given the fact that
your rhetoric is invariably
radical in temper,
how do you explain, objectively,
the extremely modest nature
of the changes that
you've managed to affect?
Is that your question? [laughs]
I mean, is that all of it?
Well, let's begin by
attacking the premise.
Our achievements have
been far from modest,
and only a person blinded by dogma,
or utterly without acumen
could fail to see it,
there hasn't been a
portion of this society,
from top to bottom, that
hasn't been profoundly affected
by what we have done in office and out,
the record speaks for itself,
but I'll speak for it, if you like?
Do you want to hear it?
Yes, yes indeed.
Well, where to begin?
Ah, 24,
1924, when we found ourselves
a minority government,
up against a potential
Tory, Liberal alliance,
and a hostile press,
and we still managed, in
months, mind you, not in years,
to uphold our election promises
over unemployment benefits,
over creation of new jobs,
and roads and railway constructions,
and slum clearances, and
new housing subsidies,
and over education, 1929.
I guess a backlog of
shrinking world trade,
and the collapse in the
world's financial structures
and still at the mercy of
Tory, Liberal alliances,
we were still able to raise and extend
pensions for the widows
and the old people,
it was still managed to, well, see that
unemployment insurance was
more easily obtainable,
still able to work for
international cooperation
and disarmament.
I make no apologies for the
renegade McDonald and the 1939,
1931 national government,
but you'll remember that he
was promptly, and rightly,
expelled from the party
and ignored by thereafter.
Another great act of the administration,
1945 to 51, well there
surely, if nowhere else, huh?
I make no mention of my own part,
but look at the record
sometime, objectively. [laughs]
If I may bottom a very overused
word from you for a moment,
now, look, we said, we
must have full employment,
and we had it for the
first time in history,
outside of wars.
We said, we must control the
commanding heights of industry,
so we took coal, the railways,
transport, gas, electricity,
iron and steel into public ownership.
We said, we must have a say in
how the country was financed,
so we nationalised the Bank of England,
and underpinning all this
we created a caring society
where a person was entitled
to a good education,
to health service, national assistance
and pensions, as of right,
and not as some charity doled
out by this committee or that.
In six short years we
created a social revolution,
and we did it with the
consent of the people,
and nobody was shot, or
imprisoned, or tortured,
or blown up to achieve it,
and we did it against a
backlog of financial crisis,
of world shortages in food,
fuel, and raw materials,
a hostile civil service
and a raggedly Tory press,
and against an international community
that was determined to make
the abandonment of our socialist policies
the condition to make
loan capital available.
Shall I bring us up to date?
Or do we just
let the question quietly drop?
Leave it be William.
Is that what you want?
Oh, go ahead.
Let it drop--
Like hell we'll let it drop,
you finish what you started.
Look, you're old, and you're
ill, and you're my father,
there's no way I can win.
I asked my question, you answered it.
Now don't patronise me sonny.
All right.
Ramsey McDonald argued in 1923,
"We are going to make the
land blossom like a Rose
and fill it with glorious aspiration."
Now, when he came to power, the
first Labour Prime Minister,
a national daily argued,
"The party of revolution,
approach their very hands
to the helm of state
with the design of destroying
the basis of civilised life."
I hope we get a chance to look at these
dangerous men in your programme,
as they queued nervously,
in their bowlers and
toppers and cutaway collars
outside Buckingham Palace,
waiting to meet the Royal person
and prove the papers wrong.
You make no case at all for them,
beyond the tiniest ameliorations in lives,
impoverished and ghastly beyond belief.
So, there's a little
point in dwelling of them,
safe to point out that in the likes
of Philip Snowden and Ramsay MacDonald,
but capitalist system
found two of its ablest
and most orthodox defenders this century.
Labour leaders, leaders
of the working class,
like you,
out of touch,
out of reach,
out of sympathy,
leaders.
Nobody's spent more time in
their constituency than I did,
and well you know it.
Except you didn't live in it.
Of course I didn't,
cause I worked in London.
But you had a house in
Manchester, where we grew up.
Only it wasn't in your
constituency, now what it?
It was in Didsbury, with four
bedrooms, attics, cellars,
parks, nursery school, playing fields.
Not the sort of housing you
find in Beswick, now was it?.
Because Beswick was single class
housing, was working class.
Would you have thanked
me for a childhood spent
in a dingy two up and down, yeah?
Yes, yes I would,
because then the rhetoric
would have made sense,
because then the leaders and the led
would have been a part
of the same experience.
Instead of being just a
part of the same sentence.
No, well I never lost touch.
No, no, never, oh they'd sooner
have let me know if I had,
when it hurts most, in the ballot box.
No, no, it was the rhetoric
that you never lost,
so that you can describe
the Attlee legislation
as a social revolution,
as though what happened
during that period is what
socialism is actually all about,
a real social revolution
would have committed itself
to the irreversible
destruction of capitalism
and the social order formed
and maintained by it.
A real social revolution
would have affected the major
redistribution of wealth
in favour of the labouring
masses, a real social revolution
would have smashed the
bourgeois state apparatus,
and begun the creation
of a people's state.
Courts, civil service departments,
police, church, army, school,
nothing would have stayed the same.
So, it was not a social
revolution that you achieved.
It was, as it turned out, a
minimal social adjustment.
You drew a section of the working class
into the grammar schools and
you allowed the public schools
to go on training middle
class and upper class elites.
You set up national insurance schemes
and you allowed the private
ones to feed and grow fat
on the pond of fear that was remaining.
You created a national health service
and you allowed the doctors
to go on practising privately.
You created municipal housing
unless they have building industry
in the hands of the capitalists.
You nationalised the ailing
industries and services,
but you allowed the strong
ones to go on being run
privately for private profit.
So you did not create a new social order.
You merely tried to humanise the old one.
Have you finished?
I've barely started.
It's all so easy, isn't it.
You sit behind your little
desk, in your little room,
in your little ivory tower,
reading your Marx and your Trotsky,
and you get out your slide rule,
and you make one or
two simple calculations
and you come up with your blueprint,
revolution, total change, overnight, bang.
Oh yes, especially bang.
Oh, you have to have your
bit of theatre, haven't you?
But look, reality isn't like that,
no, no, reality is taking people with you,
it's arguing with people who
disagree with you passionately,
it's fighting hostile
influences, foreign investors,
country speculators,
it's sweating to have a
good balance of trade surplus
at the end of the month.
Reality is priorities.
You haven't got the first idea.
Maybe not,
but I can recognise
a shabby definition of the
word reality when I hear it.
[Waite] No.
Did it ever occur to you
that Edward Heath might have given
exactly the same definition
as the one that you've just propounded?
I mean, is a socialist reality
the same as a Tory one then?
Well, we live in the same world don't we,
and it doesn't change because
you shut your eyes and dream.
It doesn't change unless
we shut our eyes and dream.
I take my desires for reality,
because I believe in the
reality of my desires.
Now you try a bit of leading some day
and see where it gets you.
You didn't fail to deliver
a social revolution
because reality got in the road.
You didn't deliver one
because you didn't want one.
You didn't desire one.
In fact, you desired anything but.
You'll learn.
If there's one thing marks you out,
all you Labour leaders,
it's this desperate need to be accepted.
You efface yourselves until
there's nothing there.
You all want to prove that you can do job
just as well as they can,
as though that was the summit
of socialist aspiration.
This need to be thought
of as responsible men.
You examine that seedy collection
currently leading the party,
you define for me their
reality if you can.
They stand there like
adolescents at a dance,
waiting to become men.
Churchill knew it instinctively,
"Sheep in sheep's clothing."
That's what he called you.
An empty cab drew up
and Mr. Attlee got out.
There's a sort of masochism
that you all have,
it's not there in the Tories, no fear.
Look, when a Tory minister calls in
at his favourite whorehouse,
he doesn't go there to get
beaten, he goes there to beat,
because he's used to it
and you never will be.
I hope this is of some use to you,
because I'm damned if it's
any use to me. [laughs]
When a man gets down to
quoting Churchill at me,
I know he's run out of an argument,
he talks about revolution,
he forgets to talk about politics.
Right, you tell us about 1926 then.
William that's enough,
it's been a long day.
What do you want to know?
Well, wouldn't you have said
that 1926 was a sort of
revolutionary moment?
No, on the contrary, I'd have said
it was the final and crushing
evidence that revolution
in your sense is not the
English way of doing it.
Is that what you believed at the time?
I believed in the miners
cause at the time,
you'll recall I was a miner.
So you believed in all out confrontation
with the onus on the state then?
Yes, I did.
But I don't think that--
You're a liar.
Say that again.
You're a liar.
That's it, I've heard enough,
you leave before you do any more damage.
I leave, when he tells me to.
You leave now.
Leave me alone.
I am not a bloody infant,
and neither is he.
He's ill, Christ, do you want to kill him?
All right Maria, let him be.
And you should know
better, you should grow up,
a man of your age, you're
like children, you two,
it's "me, me".
Jesus Christ, damn you both.
[door slams]
Would you rather I--
Oh, no, no, you should stay
to the end Mr. Massingham,
after all it's been
created in your honour,
let's have it then.
Hmm.
When I'm not devising
blueprints for revolution
in that ivory tower,
otherwise known as the
university of Manchester,
I busy myself with a doctoral thesis
on the relationships between
leadership and grassroots
in working class political organisations.
Now that might neither
interest you, nor disturb you.
What may come as something
of a surprise is the fact
that over the past six months,
I have had access to
NUM files, your union,
for the year, 1926, the
year of the general strike,
the year you made District
Association Executive.
I've had a chance to study your record
during that crucial year,
how you spoke and how you voted,
and I know now, absolutely,
what you're made of,
and what you've always been made of.
You opposed the strike
before it took place,
and you voted on no less
than six occasions after it
for a return to work, you
didn't want it to take place,
you didn't want it to succeed.
And when it was over,
you acted as vice chairman on a committee,
set up with the owners to
agree on pay reductions,
understood who would all go down the road.
Now, that's the sort of
leadership that you offered,
and if that's what you
call being for the miners,
well by Christ, I hope
you never side with me.
I'm astonished you had to go to the files.
The votes were secret.
Yeah, but I could have told you,
yeah the votes were secret,
but the majority always won.
We, each of us registered what we believed
in our hearts to be right,
and then we all chipped in as Democrats
to implement the wishes of the majority.
I did nothing that I'm ashamed of,
our position was hopeless, in my view,
both before and after the strike,
the strike proved nothing,
it achieved nothing,
save more redundancies.
The strike proved that men can find
the most extraordinary solidarity,
given the most extreme
and appalling conditions.
Now, given a leadership based
on the reality of desire,
as opposed to the irreality of rhetoric,
who knows what could
have been accomplished.
In any case, this part of your life
has hardly been an open book, has it?
Did you know about it?
-No, no, I can't say.
-No, no.
And he's read your autobiography.
A life's a long thing, a
book can't hold it all.
It will generally be found
to hold what we want it to.
I stand by what I've done.
I've made mistakes, God knows,
and usually I've paid for them,
but I believe I've given
more than I've taken,
and I've helped more
people than I've hurt.
I agree with Beatrice Webb
about the general strike
and the miner's strike
that precipitated it.
A "proletarian distemper", she called it,
that had to run its course.
Well, distemper's a kind of sickness
and you can't build a
new order on a sickness.
As for desires, and reality, well,
people have always suffered
from a poverty of desires,
my friend Bevan used to say.
Now we could have gone faster, perhaps,
but they wanted us to
walk so as they could see
where we were going.
One day you might find yourself
doing something serious, right?
Running a ministry, then
you'll see where [laughs]
dreams will get you.
Now I'm going to bed,
'cause you make me tired,
see you in the morning Mr. Massingham,
oh, and thank you for the present.
Thank you both for the present.
Oh,
there is one other betrayal
that I think you should know about,
but I'd ask you to keep it
to yourself for the moment.
I am going to be elevated to
the peerage in the new year,
so if you want to change
your name by deed poll,
I should quite understand.
Night Mr. Massingham.
[door slams]
[glass chinking]
Excuse me. [clears throat]
Mm,
Lord Waite remembers, hmm.
Your researcher should have
found out about the pipe,
it's a prop, he hasn't
smoked it for 15 years.
I had some copies made of
the miner's strike voting.
What makes you?
What makes you think I'll use it?
Won't you?
[Massingham] I don't know.
Yes you do.
[paper slams on table]
You can't resist it.
I thought you were against me?
Oh, I am.
Then why this?
I went to see a mate of mine
in London this afternoon,
Olwyn Bell, he works for
your lot, do you know him?
Not, really, I see him at
meetings from time to time.
He knows you.
[Massingham] Mm hmm.
He says you're a crook.
Does he?
Yeah, he says that you're well
known in the features field
for setting up projects in
order to get other things done.
Really?
Mm.
He says that if you're
going to do a whitewash
on a Labour politician
you're almost certainly
planning a hatchet job,
and I trust Olwyn.
He's pretty certain there's no such series
as "Living History", either
on the stocks or projected.
I told you it's a working title.
So, if I'm shooting, use
some of your ammunition,
is that it?
Something like that.
Maybe I shouldn't bother interfering.
Leave you to each other.
Maybe that way your class loyalty
and his objective treachery
will stand out that much more clearly,
attack him how you like.
I can take it you won't be
speaking with him, can I?
Yes, do you think he'd listen, to me?
In any case,
he needs you just about
as much as you need him.
You're both of you involved
in mystifications aren't you?
I told you what I am involved in,
I am involved in making good programmes.
Sure, and if that involves
ridiculing and sneering at a man
who spent the best part of his life,
however benightedly, trying
to make life just that
little bit better for
people, well, so be it.
That's what happens
when the cookie crumbles
and the shit hits the fan, et cetera.
Hm, yes?
Because, I mean, nobody
can take seriously,
let alone imagine fit for
office a man who likes HP sauce,
or Wincarnis, or ducks in flight
up on the wall now, can they?
I mean, you can't possibly esteem someone
who looks and talks like
a grocer now can you?
I mean, you can't possibly
listen to someone who's been
branded on the tongue.
Oh my God.
If only the 18th century hadn't
worked out the way it did,
what a fine, and ordered world,
we'd all be living in, hm?
That is typical,
perhaps you should go
into politics sometimes,
you seem to have all the answers.
I'd still sooner be me
than you, good night.
[door slams]
[Woman] You listen, but
you don't hear do you?
I said, "I'm going."
Are you awake?
Aye, come in.
Mind your eyes.
Ah.
You're going to be all right?
Yes, I'm indestructible.
I'll come at Christmas if you like?
That'd be nice.
You mustn't let yourself get
upset like that, you know.
He's like his mother,
stubborn, even looks like her.
Get away, he's yours all right.
No, you're mine.
Dad, is there any chance
of your not accepting it?
I've said yes, can't go back on my word.
Do you think I should?
Oh, you must do what you thinks right.
You do despise it though, don't you?
You don't believe it somehow honours you?
From miners boy to peer of the realm,
or how I fell from grace, hey?
No, no, no.
Just say it suits my purpose,
and the party's.
Now you will accompany me, won't you?
I don't think I can, dad.
I see.
It wouldn't be right, dad.
How can I believe in a classless society,
and then suddenly one day take part
in their obscene pantomime.
How could I keep faith with
the kids I teach if I did that?
I spend most of my working
life fighting against
privilege and hierarchy, and
inequalities of opportunity.
No, you make too much of it lass,
it's none but a little thing.
Maybe, but sooner or later
we've got to stop being picked off,
sucked in, patted and flattered.
We go when the class
goes, we've got to say no.
You can't lead an army in
the uniform of the enemy, hm?
Well it's not been what
you might call my day,
all together, has it?
Some days it's hardly
worthwhile getting out of bed.
Perhaps it will buck up
tomorrow, let me sleep now.
I'm sorry.
Ma, you could stay.
No, I can't miss the
clinic two weeks running.
Take care.
Ma, leave your mother's
address, I'll drop her a line.
[crew muttering]
Goodbye, Mrs. Bryant, I very
much enjoyed meeting you.
Goodbye Mr. Massingham,
you will be gentle with him, won't you?
Of course.
He's a good man.
[crew muttering]
Alright, well we'll go from
somewhere in the middle,
just to get the feel and
range of it all, all right?
Keep it tight.
Okay.
"Living History", nine, take one.
Lord Waite, I'd like to
ask you about your attitude
to some of the really crucial moments
in the history of our
society in this century,
take 1926, for example,
and the general strike.
Now, how would you summarise
your view of it now,
half a century later,
and how would that view
differ from your feelings at the time?
You were, of course, deeply involved
in the miners strike of that year
that directly precipitated
the general strike.
[brass music]
should be marvellous.
It is a lovely house.
I wouldn't have thought
Surrey quite right,
somehow, given your life.
No?
No, I suppose not.
It's handy for London, I live here.
They haven't buried me yet.
Well, it's very kind of
you to ask me to stay.
It will help.
I hope we'll count ourselves
friends when it's over.
As long as you don't mind a good row.
I've never managed to last very long
without a flaming good row.
Well, perhaps a short canter
over the early ground,
provided we don't spoil
tomorrow's spontaneity.
Whatever you say.
Just to get the feel and range of it all.
Now, by the way, I would
like to call you Lord Waite,
if that's all right?
No chance of you not accepting, is there?
No, none at all.
So, Lord Waite, tell us
something about your early life.
You were born in Manchester, weren't you?
Your parents were Manchester people.
Born in 1903,
one of seven children.
Now, what was it like?
Eight of us, mother, father,
four lads, two lasses in four rooms.
Two up, two down, and a lavatory
in the yard at the back.
The schooling, nasty, British and short
is the phrase that springs to mind.
[laughs] Oh yes, I organised
the first monitor's strike,
16 of us, headmistress
took us all into the hole
and leathered us til we could hardly stand
and then made us confess
the error of our ways
before the whole school.
Did you do it?
Yes, I did.
Well, when I saw there
was nothing else for it.
I mean, she'd put her
fear of God up the others,
there was no point in going
it alone, so I recanted.
Live to fight another day, you might say.
I left school my 13th birthday
and went down the pit,
that's when I first became involved
in the trade union movement.
It's what fed me politics all my life.
We might've been living in another planet
for all anybody cared, but I remember,
I was 11, just.
Dad was, oh, 38, 39.
He volunteered the first week of the war.
Joe and Phillip followed him, 19 and 17,
all dead by Christmas,
it's a long thing a life,
you can't get it all in a book.
Did you ever imagine in
those early distant days
that you might achieve
what you have achieved
in the years that followed?
Oh yes, yes, 'cause you see we were right,
and there's nothing you
can't do if you're right.
Nothing?
Oh, that's right.
Oh, it's provided, it's
possible, of course.
[drink sloshing]
[squeaking]
[papers rustling]
[Woman] Jesus, God, I only
slept with him, you know?
He didn't take my soul.
[drink sloshing]
[radio applause]
[Radio Host 1] Germany and Japan.
[Waite] I don't just happen
to remember, young man.
[Radio Host 2] Overwhelmed.
[Radio Host 3] This morning
[radio crosstalk]
I had another talk
with the German chancellor, Herr Hitler.
[Radio Host 4] Can we have
the Britain we deserve?
[Radio Host 5] You send a British boy
[radio crosstalk]
[radio crosstalk]
[radio crosstalk]
[radio crosstalk]
[Woman] Wasn't it nice?
Was that nice?
Isn't that what you wanted?
Isn't that what you wanted?
Oh. [groans]
[plate clatters]
[door opening]
[clock ticking]
Richard Massingham.
[Richard] Yes.
Maria
Waite.
Ah.
Won't you come in?
Thank you.
[door slams]
I--
Have a drink.
Ah, thank you very much.
Yourself?
No, of course not.
[footsteps]
My father's had some sort of heart attack.
What?
Or perhaps, merely a
serious bout of indigestion.
The doctor can't make up his mind.
I see.
I, I am sorry.
Have they taken him in?
No, they've left a nurse.
He has a history of hypertension,
but if it was a coronary,
it appears to have been
a relatively minor one,
as far as one can tell.
I see.
We'll know in the morning
when the results of the tests are through.
How is he?
Would you believe, comfortable?
Floating on a sea of
morphine and anticoagulants
is probably more accurate,
but decidedly less reassuring.
You didn't mean that though, did you?
I'm sorry.
He'll have to rest, but he
won't die, not this time.
Another?
Thank you, no.
Would you mind if I use
the phone for a moment?
Help yourself.
Would you like me to leave?
No, no, no, please, please.
[telephone dialling]
Hello, room maid please.
Hello, Eddie, Richard, hi.
Look, I'm sorry to call
you at this hour, but...
What?
No, no, no, no.
Look, Mr. Waite has been taken ill.
No, no, it's not quite
clear how at the moment,
but it's obviously gonna be
a few days at the very least.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
No, I want to use the time
picking up background footage,
by Manchester.
Yeah, well, I'll give you the details
when you collect your gear in the morning.
I know that Eddie and I'll authorise it.
Eddie I know that.
All right, you travel up, that's a day.
You shoot, day and a half, maybe two,
travel back, no problem.
So take it from Jeanie's float,
yeah, in writing, you'll have it.
Well, general stuff,
look, there's an area he was born in,
he claims has been
pulled down and rebuilt.
Now I want you to check it
out, shoot whatever's there,
we can use whatever it
is, old or new, you know.
Old slums, or new ones,
tower block variety,
and there may be a couple of interviews
with people who knew him in those, I'll,
I'll get the research onto
that first thing in the morning
and let you know.
What?
No, no, no angle, so it may
be a news angle, who knows?
Be prepared, huh.
Yeah, well we'll talk in
the morning, thanks Eddie.
Bye.
[phone slams]
[drink sloshing]
Would you mind if--
Be my guest.
Thank you.
[glass chinking]
Is it simply a distress?
Or have I offended you
in some way Mrs. Bryant?
My God, you boys do your
homework, don't you.
Well?
Don't patronise me Mr. Massingham.
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.
I can't decide whether your sensitivity
is real or tactical.
Ah.
There you go again.
Ah, poor suffering inferior creature, ah.
He's old and he's sick and he's tired.
Leave him be.
Is that what he wants?
No, it's what I want.
He's a public man, a
great one some would say.
What would you say?
That's not my brief, I
present, others judge.
Ah.
Ah?
[Maria] Tell me about your brief.
I'm setting up a series
called, "Living History",
they're long, hardcore
interviews with living people
who embody important strands
in our relatively recent past.
This one's the pilot, the first,
they buy or reject on this one.
Why my father?
I wrote to 10 professors of politics,
10 professors of modern history,
outlined my brief and asked them to list
the people they considered best fill it.
Your father was mentioned 12 times,
a major trade union leader,
a quarter of a century in the commons,
three cabinet posts, party
treasurer, party chairman.
Man of the people.
As you say.
What about you?
What about me, I'm not important?
Too bright for Eton, Marlborough?
Winchester.
[laughs] Yes, I should have
recognised that distinctive,
"I'm not important" style of arrogance.
It's amazing.
You're exactly the way I
expected your father might be.
Don't tell me it's chip
on the shoulder time.
You're all the bloody same.
The moment your sleek charm
fails to make the requisite impression,
you fall to whining about
chips on the shoulder.
Your dispensation isn't natural you know?
Or God given, it's bred,
like my resistance.
I'd have thought they'd have told you that
while they were making you.
I think I'll go to bed.
I'd rather not fight if
it's all the same to you.
Especially with someone who insists on
hitting below the intellect,
I know what you mean.
Will you be staying?
For a few days, until he's on his feet.
Ah.
It's half term, I teach,
or I suppose you've had
your researcher on that too?
Did she tell you I'd left my husband?
No.
Good night, Mrs. Bryant.
[door slams]
William.
Rest.
Is your mother here?
No.
[man coughing]
Thank you for coming Doctor.
Bye bye.
Christ, he's older and iller than father.
He never stopped coughing the
whole time we were up there.
I have fruit.
No, thank you.
What did he have to say?
Up Friday for an hour, no
repeats this time they think.
Looks like you'll get your
programme after all Mr. Massingham.
You seen anything of mother?
Nope.
I had a letter from her a
while ago, from Estoril.
Yeah, where's that?
Portugal.
[laughs] Oh Jesus, oh.
How is she?
Oh, she's all right, she's left Frederick.
You remember Frederick?
The one with the teeth.
Who was the marina developer?
Frederick, that was him, she's left him.
[laughs] Yeah.
She asked for your address.
Mm.
What about a drink, Mr. Massingham?
Thank you, no, I have some work to do.
In this new golden age of unemployment
it's difficult to tell
whether you are boasting
or merely stating a fact.
I'll see what there is.
Ah, sweet, there's
Benedictine, Curacao, Drambuie,
dry Brandy,
Calvados,
Canadian ginger.
Coffee.
Must've had his Christmas presents early
from his friends in the city.
They say daddy used to like a
glass of stout in the old day.
Stop making speeches.
What'd you think of my
father, Mr. Massingham?
I think he's a remarkable man.
William.
[laughs] Remarkable, yeah, mm,
now this programme that
you're doing is what?
"Living History", that's the title?
Working title.
Ah, you mean you might change it?
It's possible, producers don't always have
the final say in series titles.
So it could end up as,
"Historical Curiosities",
or "Anomalies of History",
or "A Gallery of Class Traitors".
I think that's a little unlikely.
Do you?
I personally wouldn't mind
in the least, you understand?
Conceivably, he might though.
I believe I've already
heard the next speech
from your sister.
You think so?
I saw a book in compendium the other day,
called "The Knee of Listening".
I couldn't believe it.
I think it was planted by somebody
doing the detailed study
of the double take,
mine was monumental.
[laughs]
Would it be convenient
to call in on your father
for a chat now, do you think?
10 minutes, you mustn't tyre him.
Good.
You haven't really said
anything, have you.
What do you want?
Where I was born?
Early life?
Parents, school, relationships?
What purpose would it serve,
except to confirm your view that,
unlike you, presumably,
I am a total product of my environment.
I meant more the programme.
I mean you're too intelligent, too clever,
really to believe that
one can talk, as it were,
neutrally about the past, so,
when you choose to examine the
social and political history
of 20th century Britain,
through the eyes and the mouth
of a major Labour politician,
you must have some
framework, attitude, point of view,
to hold the whole thing together.
I don't see why?
Well that would mean
that you were indifferent,
that you didn't care.
No, the conventional
rules of historiography
and biography will be observed.
I can't see that it makes better history
if one has an axe to grind.
Can't you?
You see, and I work in the margins
of history and sociology currently,
and have reason to look at
this issue fairly closely.
So you can't look at a
mainstream representative
of Labourism in this century,
my father, say, without
declaring an interest.
Thank you.
Because Labourism is in itself a critique,
both of extra parliamentary
revolutionism, on the one hand,
and of parliamentary Toryism on the other.
In other words, it's not
a state definable with
planes and surfaces and textures.
Well at least it's not in essence that,
it's basically a process.
A more or less, dynamic interaction
between value and value,
between assertion and counter
assertion, stimulus, response.
You just can't describe the welfare state.
You have to account for it.
And that means making
some sort of assessment
of its goodness or whatever,
of its preferability to whatever it was
that it superseded, and
of its deficiencies,
in terms of what was
actually realisable, potent,
during the period in which
it was being constructed.
Well, I don't disagree,
but I'm not writing the
history, your father is,
because he's lived it.
I'm simply the film
camera, the tape recorder,
the lighting man--
The programme controller, the sound mixer,
the picture researcher, the blurb writer,
the film editor, the audience softener.
Hmm, it's not even that.
Suppose, it's the North American Indians
that you want to talk about,
now, how do you set
about writing a history
of the red Indian in the 19th century,
or in this, without
mentioning the word genocide?
Yet merely, to invoke the
concept is to begin to develop
a critique of American society
and the economic necessities
of contemporary capitalism.
So, your answer, superficially
attractive is presumably
to invite along some Indian
chief to tell it how it was,
some [laughs] Edward Waite
of the Nez Perce or Arapaho.
The question though, still
remains, which chief?
Spotted Tail?
Geronimo?
Because most of them led their
people into obliteration.
Most of them sold out,
assimilated, settled for ignominy,
starvation on barren
and remote reservations,
in the face of the higher technology.
Yet, Geronimo and others,
proved objectively
that another way was open to the Indian
based on attritional struggle,
organisation, discipline, courage, will.
So, if you want to write
the history, Mr. Massingham,
you have to say who was right.
You have to choose your spokesman.
Your analogy is peculiarly unapt,
if I may say so?
The history of your father's people,
if I might put it that way,
has been the history of increasing control
over their social and work environment,
and the steady amelioration
of the quality of their life,
and your father's leading
role in this progress,
we take to be pretty well self-evident.
A value, at last.
Let me tell you how I
see my father's role.
If this coronary had killed him,
I'd have suggested an epitaph
from a speech by Kicking Bird,
chief of the Kiowas,
who said towards the end of
his highly distinguished life,
all that there is to be said
about my father's sort of leadership.
"I, long ago, took the
white man by the hand.
I've never let it go,
I have held it with a
strong and a firm grasp.
I have worked hard to
bring my people along
the white man's road.
Sometimes, I have been compelled
to work with my back
towards the white people
and they have not seen my face,
and they may have thought that
I was working against them,
but I have worked.
I have looked ahead to the future,
for the children of our people,
and I have worked to
bring them into a position
that when they become men and women,
they will take up the white road.
Now I am as a stone, broken,
thrown away,
and what I fear most
is that they will go
back to the old road."
[footsteps]
So,
you hate your father.
You listen, but you don't
hear Mr. Massingham.
13, two.
Oh, look at your cards.
Hm, 15, two, 15, four, dead poll.
Hmm, oh, I'll give it to you.
You sure?
Don't be cheeky.
[laughs] It's not like you to give up.
Rubbish, when I'm licked
nobody gives up faster than me,
there's no fun to be a had
in fighting losing battles.
How much is that?
30p.
Then, well you'll have to wait.
You warm enough?
Yeah, I'm fine, don't fuss.
Do you want anything?
No, no no, I'll go
upstairs back in a minute,
it's just that I'm a little tired.
You look fine.
I feel fine, I feel better
than I did before I had it,
I just feel a little tired, that's all.
[Maria] Have you had a
chat with William yet?
Oh, I've never had a chat
with William in my life,
you can have a fight with
him or a flaming good row,
you can try and make the
occasional interruption
to his speeches, but
chat with him. [laughs]
Well, we exchanged unpleasantries
this morning, briefly, why?
He seems upset about
something, I don't know.
Isn't he always, Vietnam,
Cambodia, industrial relations,
wounded knee, was it?
Well, should he be, a lad of mine.
Maybe.
He used to cry for you,
when you had all night
sittings and didn't come home,
a long time ago.
That was the day before yesterday.
How has, how's school?
School is school, I don't
want to talk about it.
I thought you liked teaching,
nice big comprehensive,
airy classrooms, lots of new equipment?
Yes.
My day, it was something different.
Oh, I know about that dad.
[newspaper rustling]
You see anything of your husband?
Yes, I had a letter from him a while ago.
He wants to remarry, an actress.
What about you?
Once is enough for me.
Are you sure?
It's a long time.
My needs are relatively few,
and not difficult to satisfy.
Can't speak for this one though.
I've got an address for mother,
if you want me to write?
What about?
Ah, forgive me, just off.
[clears throat] Well have a safe journey.
[Waite] Now, I've made
arrangements for the interview
to take place Monday morning, as agreed,
now are you sure you're
going to feel up to it?
Yes, yes, yes, they'd have
to cut me up in little bits
and feed me to the dogs
before they get shot of me,
no don't you fret.
Fine, fine, well, oh,
would it be all right
if I came down Sunday evening,
with some of the crew,
just to get things set up?
Come back whenever you
like, it's no bother.
Sunday's your birthday.
What?
Oh, so it is,
well, if you're back early enough,
you'll be in time for the
jelly, and a piece of cake.
[laughs] Are you sure?
I mean, I wouldn't want to
get in the way of a family do.
Oh God, yeah, we've never
been what you might call
struck on birthdays in this family.
No, we'll see you at Sunday dinner.
Thank you.
Well,
goodbye.
Bye
Yeah.
Nice young fellow.
I never can remember whether
he's BBC or the other lot.
Does it matter?
Oh I don't suppose so.
I think I'll push off home
if you're gonna be all right?
No, do I have to be dying
to get a bit of attention?
Don't be silly.
What is it?
Nothing.
I don't like that man.
I don't trust him and I
don't think you should.
Oh, so that's how you suck eggs is it?
Well, I'd never have known.
Now what makes you think I trust him?
How'd you mean?
Listen baby,
I've been in this game a long time,
and you don't get where
I got by trusting people.
Especially not the likes of him.
He's clever.
Is he?
And he doesn't care, about you I mean.
Well, he doesn't have to, it's
a free country, all right.
I don't understand you
young people, I don't.
The minute you feel something,
you think your only
responsibility is to express it,
now in my line of country
that is tantamount to suicide,
"Shout when you have to,
smile when you don't."
Keir Hardie has said, hey?
I think you should rest, come.
No, listen, sit down,
I've got something I want to ask of you.
[grunts]
[paper rustling]
That robe's just come from the tailors.
I've accepted a peerage,
it'll be announced in the
New Years Honours List.
You're to tell nobody,
but I wanted you to know.
Well, say something.
Say what?
Why?
Why not?
No, I wasn't built for
retirement, obscurity,
I'm no thinker, I need to be
doing and this is an arena.
What's the matter with that?
How?
The Tories put you up for it?
Oh, technicality, a deal.
I was offered in 1970,
but I thought I might get a
safe seat in a by-election.
I'll take the Labour whip,
it's perfectly normal.
So do it.
I want your help.
Yes.
Hmm, there's a investiture ceremony,
ooh, sometime February at the palace.
Now that your mother has finally decided,
well I would like you to
accompany me and be my,
my woman.
If you would?
[William whistling]
The squirrels are killing that Yew,
if I were you I'd have
someone take a gun to them.
I don't understand a
word he says, you know,
how can a squirrel kill a tree?
They eat the bark.
When the strip parts meet in
the circle, the tree dies.
Attending the Conservative
Party Conference.
[all laughing]
Don't think we'll use that tomorrow.
No.
Now then, one drink the
doctor said, what will it be?
I've been saving myself
up for a glass of that.
Good.
Thank you, ah.
Mr. Massingham.
Thank you.
Mm, hmm hmm.
Now then, bring your glasses
through, there's a surprise.
Oh.
Ah, [laughs]
you know all the world's
a classroom to this one.
She's a born organiser,
"Do this, do that."
Go on. [laughs]
Oh, oh,
self made God.
Do you need any help? [laughs]
Happy birthday dad.
[laughs] Do you want to?
[grunts]
Now isn't that something?
Shall I cut it or will you?
No, no, no, I want to have a picture of it
before you destroy it, do you mind?
Not at all, it'll probably taste terrible.
[Massingham] May I look?
Ah, yes, of course.
Thank you.
It's marvellous, what's it from?
I took it from a William Morris banner.
You should see the original.
It's marvellous, is that what
you teach, domestic science?
I teach art.
[Waite laughs]
Oh, you made it then?
Yeah, I got stuck at
Guildford, coming back.
Sorry that I missed your thing.
Come in and help yourself to a drink.
[laughs]
Sit down Mr. Massingham.
Ah, [laughs].
I bought you this.
Very nice of you.
[paper crinkling]
Indian oratory, will I
find this instructive?
You might, tell me when you've read it.
I will, I will, oh and
Maria gave me this tie,
and oh yes, and I've had a
tin of very expensive
tobacco from Mr. Massingham.
[William] Tobacco?
Yes, that's right.
It's very nice.
I got you something else, actually, I,
oh I don't know if it'll be of any use.
It's work as well, but I thought you might
just like to have it for
your own use afterwards.
I've had a picture researcher
working on the period,
this is some of the stuff
we're going to want in the programme.
I asked her to look out some
of the best pictures of you and
make it up into this,
if it's of any interest.
Of interest, I should
say so, yeah, thank you.
[laughs] Oh, look at Manny there,
you know he never could resist the camera.
Well you can talk.
Oh wow.
Dear God.
A man could die of memories like that.
Well, I'll go up.
You've got a lot to talk
about I should imagine.
I thought you wanted to
discuss about tomorrow?
Oh no, not if it's going to get in the way
of a family celebration, I--
Nonsense, nonsense, no, it'll
be a sort of party piece,
I don't know, give William
something to get his teeth into,
what do you say William?
What's that?
We're going to talk about my interview,
and I said you would enjoy
a bit of mental exercise.
Why not?
The doctor said an early night.
I know what the doctor
said and I'll see him out,
physician, heal thyself,
I said to him let's heal them after.
Come on, sit down, now let's
all get cracking, shall we?
It's what they call a "Talk in", hey?
Right, off you go young man.
I rather hoped you'd do
the talking, Mr. Waite,
it is your story.
Aren't you going to ask me questions?
Well, if you don't ask me questions,
I can't give you answers.
Well, couldn't we perhaps
just talk, generally, you see,
I'd like to keep your answers as
fresh and spontaneous as
possible for tomorrow.
Look, I am getting on Mr. Massingham,
you may not have noticed it,
and old men are inclined
to ramble a bit, still.
I'll ask you a question.
Oh, well is it germane?
I think so.
Hm, all right, ask your question.
Given the power that
you and your party have,
from time to time, exercised
over the past 50 years,
and given the fact that
your rhetoric is invariably
radical in temper,
how do you explain, objectively,
the extremely modest nature
of the changes that
you've managed to affect?
Is that your question? [laughs]
I mean, is that all of it?
Well, let's begin by
attacking the premise.
Our achievements have
been far from modest,
and only a person blinded by dogma,
or utterly without acumen
could fail to see it,
there hasn't been a
portion of this society,
from top to bottom, that
hasn't been profoundly affected
by what we have done in office and out,
the record speaks for itself,
but I'll speak for it, if you like?
Do you want to hear it?
Yes, yes indeed.
Well, where to begin?
Ah, 24,
1924, when we found ourselves
a minority government,
up against a potential
Tory, Liberal alliance,
and a hostile press,
and we still managed, in
months, mind you, not in years,
to uphold our election promises
over unemployment benefits,
over creation of new jobs,
and roads and railway constructions,
and slum clearances, and
new housing subsidies,
and over education, 1929.
I guess a backlog of
shrinking world trade,
and the collapse in the
world's financial structures
and still at the mercy of
Tory, Liberal alliances,
we were still able to raise and extend
pensions for the widows
and the old people,
it was still managed to, well, see that
unemployment insurance was
more easily obtainable,
still able to work for
international cooperation
and disarmament.
I make no apologies for the
renegade McDonald and the 1939,
1931 national government,
but you'll remember that he
was promptly, and rightly,
expelled from the party
and ignored by thereafter.
Another great act of the administration,
1945 to 51, well there
surely, if nowhere else, huh?
I make no mention of my own part,
but look at the record
sometime, objectively. [laughs]
If I may bottom a very overused
word from you for a moment,
now, look, we said, we
must have full employment,
and we had it for the
first time in history,
outside of wars.
We said, we must control the
commanding heights of industry,
so we took coal, the railways,
transport, gas, electricity,
iron and steel into public ownership.
We said, we must have a say in
how the country was financed,
so we nationalised the Bank of England,
and underpinning all this
we created a caring society
where a person was entitled
to a good education,
to health service, national assistance
and pensions, as of right,
and not as some charity doled
out by this committee or that.
In six short years we
created a social revolution,
and we did it with the
consent of the people,
and nobody was shot, or
imprisoned, or tortured,
or blown up to achieve it,
and we did it against a
backlog of financial crisis,
of world shortages in food,
fuel, and raw materials,
a hostile civil service
and a raggedly Tory press,
and against an international community
that was determined to make
the abandonment of our socialist policies
the condition to make
loan capital available.
Shall I bring us up to date?
Or do we just
let the question quietly drop?
Leave it be William.
Is that what you want?
Oh, go ahead.
Let it drop--
Like hell we'll let it drop,
you finish what you started.
Look, you're old, and you're
ill, and you're my father,
there's no way I can win.
I asked my question, you answered it.
Now don't patronise me sonny.
All right.
Ramsey McDonald argued in 1923,
"We are going to make the
land blossom like a Rose
and fill it with glorious aspiration."
Now, when he came to power, the
first Labour Prime Minister,
a national daily argued,
"The party of revolution,
approach their very hands
to the helm of state
with the design of destroying
the basis of civilised life."
I hope we get a chance to look at these
dangerous men in your programme,
as they queued nervously,
in their bowlers and
toppers and cutaway collars
outside Buckingham Palace,
waiting to meet the Royal person
and prove the papers wrong.
You make no case at all for them,
beyond the tiniest ameliorations in lives,
impoverished and ghastly beyond belief.
So, there's a little
point in dwelling of them,
safe to point out that in the likes
of Philip Snowden and Ramsay MacDonald,
but capitalist system
found two of its ablest
and most orthodox defenders this century.
Labour leaders, leaders
of the working class,
like you,
out of touch,
out of reach,
out of sympathy,
leaders.
Nobody's spent more time in
their constituency than I did,
and well you know it.
Except you didn't live in it.
Of course I didn't,
cause I worked in London.
But you had a house in
Manchester, where we grew up.
Only it wasn't in your
constituency, now what it?
It was in Didsbury, with four
bedrooms, attics, cellars,
parks, nursery school, playing fields.
Not the sort of housing you
find in Beswick, now was it?.
Because Beswick was single class
housing, was working class.
Would you have thanked
me for a childhood spent
in a dingy two up and down, yeah?
Yes, yes I would,
because then the rhetoric
would have made sense,
because then the leaders and the led
would have been a part
of the same experience.
Instead of being just a
part of the same sentence.
No, well I never lost touch.
No, no, never, oh they'd sooner
have let me know if I had,
when it hurts most, in the ballot box.
No, no, it was the rhetoric
that you never lost,
so that you can describe
the Attlee legislation
as a social revolution,
as though what happened
during that period is what
socialism is actually all about,
a real social revolution
would have committed itself
to the irreversible
destruction of capitalism
and the social order formed
and maintained by it.
A real social revolution
would have affected the major
redistribution of wealth
in favour of the labouring
masses, a real social revolution
would have smashed the
bourgeois state apparatus,
and begun the creation
of a people's state.
Courts, civil service departments,
police, church, army, school,
nothing would have stayed the same.
So, it was not a social
revolution that you achieved.
It was, as it turned out, a
minimal social adjustment.
You drew a section of the working class
into the grammar schools and
you allowed the public schools
to go on training middle
class and upper class elites.
You set up national insurance schemes
and you allowed the private
ones to feed and grow fat
on the pond of fear that was remaining.
You created a national health service
and you allowed the doctors
to go on practising privately.
You created municipal housing
unless they have building industry
in the hands of the capitalists.
You nationalised the ailing
industries and services,
but you allowed the strong
ones to go on being run
privately for private profit.
So you did not create a new social order.
You merely tried to humanise the old one.
Have you finished?
I've barely started.
It's all so easy, isn't it.
You sit behind your little
desk, in your little room,
in your little ivory tower,
reading your Marx and your Trotsky,
and you get out your slide rule,
and you make one or
two simple calculations
and you come up with your blueprint,
revolution, total change, overnight, bang.
Oh yes, especially bang.
Oh, you have to have your
bit of theatre, haven't you?
But look, reality isn't like that,
no, no, reality is taking people with you,
it's arguing with people who
disagree with you passionately,
it's fighting hostile
influences, foreign investors,
country speculators,
it's sweating to have a
good balance of trade surplus
at the end of the month.
Reality is priorities.
You haven't got the first idea.
Maybe not,
but I can recognise
a shabby definition of the
word reality when I hear it.
[Waite] No.
Did it ever occur to you
that Edward Heath might have given
exactly the same definition
as the one that you've just propounded?
I mean, is a socialist reality
the same as a Tory one then?
Well, we live in the same world don't we,
and it doesn't change because
you shut your eyes and dream.
It doesn't change unless
we shut our eyes and dream.
I take my desires for reality,
because I believe in the
reality of my desires.
Now you try a bit of leading some day
and see where it gets you.
You didn't fail to deliver
a social revolution
because reality got in the road.
You didn't deliver one
because you didn't want one.
You didn't desire one.
In fact, you desired anything but.
You'll learn.
If there's one thing marks you out,
all you Labour leaders,
it's this desperate need to be accepted.
You efface yourselves until
there's nothing there.
You all want to prove that you can do job
just as well as they can,
as though that was the summit
of socialist aspiration.
This need to be thought
of as responsible men.
You examine that seedy collection
currently leading the party,
you define for me their
reality if you can.
They stand there like
adolescents at a dance,
waiting to become men.
Churchill knew it instinctively,
"Sheep in sheep's clothing."
That's what he called you.
An empty cab drew up
and Mr. Attlee got out.
There's a sort of masochism
that you all have,
it's not there in the Tories, no fear.
Look, when a Tory minister calls in
at his favourite whorehouse,
he doesn't go there to get
beaten, he goes there to beat,
because he's used to it
and you never will be.
I hope this is of some use to you,
because I'm damned if it's
any use to me. [laughs]
When a man gets down to
quoting Churchill at me,
I know he's run out of an argument,
he talks about revolution,
he forgets to talk about politics.
Right, you tell us about 1926 then.
William that's enough,
it's been a long day.
What do you want to know?
Well, wouldn't you have said
that 1926 was a sort of
revolutionary moment?
No, on the contrary, I'd have said
it was the final and crushing
evidence that revolution
in your sense is not the
English way of doing it.
Is that what you believed at the time?
I believed in the miners
cause at the time,
you'll recall I was a miner.
So you believed in all out confrontation
with the onus on the state then?
Yes, I did.
But I don't think that--
You're a liar.
Say that again.
You're a liar.
That's it, I've heard enough,
you leave before you do any more damage.
I leave, when he tells me to.
You leave now.
Leave me alone.
I am not a bloody infant,
and neither is he.
He's ill, Christ, do you want to kill him?
All right Maria, let him be.
And you should know
better, you should grow up,
a man of your age, you're
like children, you two,
it's "me, me".
Jesus Christ, damn you both.
[door slams]
Would you rather I--
Oh, no, no, you should stay
to the end Mr. Massingham,
after all it's been
created in your honour,
let's have it then.
Hmm.
When I'm not devising
blueprints for revolution
in that ivory tower,
otherwise known as the
university of Manchester,
I busy myself with a doctoral thesis
on the relationships between
leadership and grassroots
in working class political organisations.
Now that might neither
interest you, nor disturb you.
What may come as something
of a surprise is the fact
that over the past six months,
I have had access to
NUM files, your union,
for the year, 1926, the
year of the general strike,
the year you made District
Association Executive.
I've had a chance to study your record
during that crucial year,
how you spoke and how you voted,
and I know now, absolutely,
what you're made of,
and what you've always been made of.
You opposed the strike
before it took place,
and you voted on no less
than six occasions after it
for a return to work, you
didn't want it to take place,
you didn't want it to succeed.
And when it was over,
you acted as vice chairman on a committee,
set up with the owners to
agree on pay reductions,
understood who would all go down the road.
Now, that's the sort of
leadership that you offered,
and if that's what you
call being for the miners,
well by Christ, I hope
you never side with me.
I'm astonished you had to go to the files.
The votes were secret.
Yeah, but I could have told you,
yeah the votes were secret,
but the majority always won.
We, each of us registered what we believed
in our hearts to be right,
and then we all chipped in as Democrats
to implement the wishes of the majority.
I did nothing that I'm ashamed of,
our position was hopeless, in my view,
both before and after the strike,
the strike proved nothing,
it achieved nothing,
save more redundancies.
The strike proved that men can find
the most extraordinary solidarity,
given the most extreme
and appalling conditions.
Now, given a leadership based
on the reality of desire,
as opposed to the irreality of rhetoric,
who knows what could
have been accomplished.
In any case, this part of your life
has hardly been an open book, has it?
Did you know about it?
-No, no, I can't say.
-No, no.
And he's read your autobiography.
A life's a long thing, a
book can't hold it all.
It will generally be found
to hold what we want it to.
I stand by what I've done.
I've made mistakes, God knows,
and usually I've paid for them,
but I believe I've given
more than I've taken,
and I've helped more
people than I've hurt.
I agree with Beatrice Webb
about the general strike
and the miner's strike
that precipitated it.
A "proletarian distemper", she called it,
that had to run its course.
Well, distemper's a kind of sickness
and you can't build a
new order on a sickness.
As for desires, and reality, well,
people have always suffered
from a poverty of desires,
my friend Bevan used to say.
Now we could have gone faster, perhaps,
but they wanted us to
walk so as they could see
where we were going.
One day you might find yourself
doing something serious, right?
Running a ministry, then
you'll see where [laughs]
dreams will get you.
Now I'm going to bed,
'cause you make me tired,
see you in the morning Mr. Massingham,
oh, and thank you for the present.
Thank you both for the present.
Oh,
there is one other betrayal
that I think you should know about,
but I'd ask you to keep it
to yourself for the moment.
I am going to be elevated to
the peerage in the new year,
so if you want to change
your name by deed poll,
I should quite understand.
Night Mr. Massingham.
[door slams]
[glass chinking]
Excuse me. [clears throat]
Mm,
Lord Waite remembers, hmm.
Your researcher should have
found out about the pipe,
it's a prop, he hasn't
smoked it for 15 years.
I had some copies made of
the miner's strike voting.
What makes you?
What makes you think I'll use it?
Won't you?
[Massingham] I don't know.
Yes you do.
[paper slams on table]
You can't resist it.
I thought you were against me?
Oh, I am.
Then why this?
I went to see a mate of mine
in London this afternoon,
Olwyn Bell, he works for
your lot, do you know him?
Not, really, I see him at
meetings from time to time.
He knows you.
[Massingham] Mm hmm.
He says you're a crook.
Does he?
Yeah, he says that you're well
known in the features field
for setting up projects in
order to get other things done.
Really?
Mm.
He says that if you're
going to do a whitewash
on a Labour politician
you're almost certainly
planning a hatchet job,
and I trust Olwyn.
He's pretty certain there's no such series
as "Living History", either
on the stocks or projected.
I told you it's a working title.
So, if I'm shooting, use
some of your ammunition,
is that it?
Something like that.
Maybe I shouldn't bother interfering.
Leave you to each other.
Maybe that way your class loyalty
and his objective treachery
will stand out that much more clearly,
attack him how you like.
I can take it you won't be
speaking with him, can I?
Yes, do you think he'd listen, to me?
In any case,
he needs you just about
as much as you need him.
You're both of you involved
in mystifications aren't you?
I told you what I am involved in,
I am involved in making good programmes.
Sure, and if that involves
ridiculing and sneering at a man
who spent the best part of his life,
however benightedly, trying
to make life just that
little bit better for
people, well, so be it.
That's what happens
when the cookie crumbles
and the shit hits the fan, et cetera.
Hm, yes?
Because, I mean, nobody
can take seriously,
let alone imagine fit for
office a man who likes HP sauce,
or Wincarnis, or ducks in flight
up on the wall now, can they?
I mean, you can't possibly esteem someone
who looks and talks like
a grocer now can you?
I mean, you can't possibly
listen to someone who's been
branded on the tongue.
Oh my God.
If only the 18th century hadn't
worked out the way it did,
what a fine, and ordered world,
we'd all be living in, hm?
That is typical,
perhaps you should go
into politics sometimes,
you seem to have all the answers.
I'd still sooner be me
than you, good night.
[door slams]
[Woman] You listen, but
you don't hear do you?
I said, "I'm going."
Are you awake?
Aye, come in.
Mind your eyes.
Ah.
You're going to be all right?
Yes, I'm indestructible.
I'll come at Christmas if you like?
That'd be nice.
You mustn't let yourself get
upset like that, you know.
He's like his mother,
stubborn, even looks like her.
Get away, he's yours all right.
No, you're mine.
Dad, is there any chance
of your not accepting it?
I've said yes, can't go back on my word.
Do you think I should?
Oh, you must do what you thinks right.
You do despise it though, don't you?
You don't believe it somehow honours you?
From miners boy to peer of the realm,
or how I fell from grace, hey?
No, no, no.
Just say it suits my purpose,
and the party's.
Now you will accompany me, won't you?
I don't think I can, dad.
I see.
It wouldn't be right, dad.
How can I believe in a classless society,
and then suddenly one day take part
in their obscene pantomime.
How could I keep faith with
the kids I teach if I did that?
I spend most of my working
life fighting against
privilege and hierarchy, and
inequalities of opportunity.
No, you make too much of it lass,
it's none but a little thing.
Maybe, but sooner or later
we've got to stop being picked off,
sucked in, patted and flattered.
We go when the class
goes, we've got to say no.
You can't lead an army in
the uniform of the enemy, hm?
Well it's not been what
you might call my day,
all together, has it?
Some days it's hardly
worthwhile getting out of bed.
Perhaps it will buck up
tomorrow, let me sleep now.
I'm sorry.
Ma, you could stay.
No, I can't miss the
clinic two weeks running.
Take care.
Ma, leave your mother's
address, I'll drop her a line.
[crew muttering]
Goodbye, Mrs. Bryant, I very
much enjoyed meeting you.
Goodbye Mr. Massingham,
you will be gentle with him, won't you?
Of course.
He's a good man.
[crew muttering]
Alright, well we'll go from
somewhere in the middle,
just to get the feel and
range of it all, all right?
Keep it tight.
Okay.
"Living History", nine, take one.
Lord Waite, I'd like to
ask you about your attitude
to some of the really crucial moments
in the history of our
society in this century,
take 1926, for example,
and the general strike.
Now, how would you summarise
your view of it now,
half a century later,
and how would that view
differ from your feelings at the time?
You were, of course, deeply involved
in the miners strike of that year
that directly precipitated
the general strike.
[brass music]